The Cost Of Privacy In The Digital Age04:27

Copy the code below to embed the WBUR audio player on your site

This article is more than 6 years old.A young man is looking at photographs of himself he has loaded onto Facebook. (Samantha Steele/Flickr)

From Twitter and Facebook to grocery store reward cards and electronic toll-collection systems, private companies collect and store private information about people every day.

Most people don't seem to mind that level of information gathering.

In fact, when it comes to private companies, people are much more willing to share data about themselves than they are with the government — especially when they feel they get something in return.

"Things that seem to be free a lot of the times...are generally things you're getting in return for giving access to a lot of personal information to private companies," said Linda Holmes, author of NPR's "Monkey See" blog.